Fine Tuning Quilted Art Projects: Fixing Things

Posted on April 25, 2020April 25, 2020 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Food for Thought, Machines, Show Quilts, Threads

I know that sometimes things go awry with my quilted art projects no matter how hard I try to keep things on track. Usually, though not always, it is entirely my fault. But sometimes, it is a machine or tool misbehaving. This week it was my bobbin case, or rather the little spring in my bobbin case. Fortunately, I had a spare, but I was not good about trying that until I had exhausted all the other reasons I was getting nasty big nested wads on the back of my quilt.

It started with just an occassional nest, and got progressively worse. In the end, before I was about to decide there was something seriously wrong with my Bernina Q20 (Fritz) sitdown longarm, it looked like this:

back when bobbin spring broke down.

Sew I made every step and tried many things. I cleaned, oiled, flossed out the thread path, and blew out the bobbin area. I took the bobbin out and put in a fresh bobbin. I took out the magic bobbin washer I usually use and tried that. I put it back in and tried that. I reset the bobbin tension, and yes, it was way off for some reason, and tried that. I changed the needle, I changed the top thread. It got better periodically, and I thought we were ok, so I went back to quilting. Unfortunately, it started misbehaving badly again (it looked great on the top but I could feel and hear it everytime it made a nest). So I stopped. I prayed about it. It was especially important that I could fix it myself since my Bernina shop is closed right now.

And then I remembered that I had bought a spare bobbin case spring because I had read on one of my facebook groups that is something people should have on hand for the Bernina Q20/Q24 longarms. I replaced the spring on the bobbin, rethreaded everything, and reset to default settings, just in case. I still got thread nests…and was about to give up, but I decided to doublecheck the tension on the bobbin again. When I took the bobbin case out, I found the bobbin was in upside down! Hahahaha. I must have done that the last time I took it out and put it back. So I put it in right, rechecked the bobbin tension and tried again. What do you know! It worked. It sewed cleanly and beautifully without any problems. So I readjusted the tension and stitch length to my preferred settings and sewed for a full half day with no problems. It is still sewing well. The spring didn’t seem to be that far flattened, but it was flatter and less bouncy than the new one. I know the bobbin was in right for most of my attempts to fix the nests. I had to laugh at myself.

Sew now I am left with the ten or so inches of the quilting on my border of the quilt that I have to unstitch, or unstitch at least a good part of it and restitch. I hate unstitching and it’s hard to do! So I have to make some decisions here on what I have to actually do. The location of this batch of bad quilting is in the lower right corner, right where a label should go. So I can hide at least some of the bad back stitches under a label, cutting off a good portion of the nests. In the process of all of this, I used a different thread for the actual large feather on that section of the border than I did for the second one on the other side of the lower border. The first thread is lighter and needs to be removed, because the darker new thread looks much better. So I will have to remove the whole feather. Sigh. I am not having much success at this. This portion stitched well and I find the stitches hard to pick out. It is slow. Sigh! But I will persist.

This all brings up the topic of fixing things on your quilted art pieces. There are things to consider when deciding to unstitch and other things that can be done some of the time.

Is the project a show quilt or show garment or for other professional use? If so, it must be fixed.
Does the problem really make the item less desireable for personal use or a gift?
Can you somehow cover up the problem with appliques, false back sections (shows do not accept false backs on show quilts), back appliques that add fun or beauty, or hide with paint?
Is it even possible to fix the problem? If not, can you use the item in some alternative way?

Sew happy everyone! Hang in there. We really are going to come to the end of this trying time and things will get better again. We may have even learned a lot of interesting life lessons from all of this. I am, in fact, really pretty excited about the fall and winter quilting and quilt show season that is before us. I am already working on it. How about you?

Keeping On Keeping On With Some Fun Too

Posted on April 4, 2020 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Ancient manuscripts, Applique, Deep space quilts, Design as you go, Embellishment, Fabrics, Food for Thought, High-Tech Studio, Machines, Show Quilts

I know some of my gentle readers are about to pull their hair out by about now being confined to their homes. Sew let us all get up and do some stretching and bending. Ten reaches to the sky, ten toe touches, ten swings from right to left with arms out, and 100 in place marches. Ten deep breaths and giggle like a kid for ten seconds. Now! Grammy BJ (that’s me) suggests doing this several times a day and then get to work or play. Here’s what I have been working on this past week.

Yes I finally made a bunch of facemasks, primarily for my family and friends. A lot of my friends have devoted their entire work time to making these masks. There is a need, and now that the study came out showing the properly made cotton masks using high end “quilter’s cotton” in at least two layers is, indeed, fairly effective (79 percent for the best, but poorly made with poor fabric choice can be virtually no use at all. A surgical mask is 65 percent effective, and the N95 is 95 percent, jusf for comparison), we no longer have to contend with people saying it isn’t of any use. Sew if you want to make some for you and your family or more I highly recommend Bethanne Nemesh’s mask method shown here in her video. I made mine this way. Here are a few of them (100 percent cotton…cotton fabric, cotton t-shirt ties, and cotton thread are easy to launder and sterilize. I may be wrong, but I don’t like the idea of a non-woven interfacing. A third layer of cotton something like flannel might add some additional safety, but the study was looking at a two-layer tight woven quilting cotton):

Sew after I made a bunch of these, I am probably done with mask making, at least for a while. Now I am very excited about my current projects. I have four I am currently working on or planning. Yes, I know that’s a lot for all at once, but I can’t help it that all the ideas came at once. Hahaha.

My primary project is my Mom’s memory quilt I am centering around five beautiful ten inch crocheted lace squares I found in her workbasket after she passed. I have made substantial quilting progress recently, and am working on quilting the borders now.

Mom’s lace squares…10 inches of beauty.

Here’s a peak…more quilting is in order here. I really really love that blue polyester dupioni and off white polyester satin. They quilt very well and did not break the bank like silk would have. I think the dupioni is clearly different from silk dupioni, but it does have a rich beautiful texture.
A wool machine appliqued quilting project that includes both samplers for my book I am writing and a larger show quilt using what I am learning as I build this part of the book and its samplers. My goal is to take true advantage of the magnificent threads and machines we have today to produce wool applique quilts that are at once suggestive of hand applique and shows and teaches the use of advanced stitching by machine. I will also add considerable amount of beads and possibly other forms of embellishment. Here’s a little test I have done to determine what may be possible and think about the pattern.

Just a test

I have determined to use my accuquilt go! cutter to cut out a bunch of shapes and in real time place them in a good design and add stitching, then make a pattern for the book. I have this nice tool, as many of you do or many have cutters of some sort, and I think it would be a fun approach, but I also plan on providing enough of a pattern for those who do not have one to make the resulting project. And yes, it will all be done on black boiled wool because that is what I have on hand. I am on a tight budget right now. LOL
My appliqued bed quilt I started some time ago using a beautiful pattern by Sue Nickels. It’s sort of Baltimore Album like, but all done by machine applique. I don’t have a picture yet. This is my relax and stitch project where I don’t have to please a judge and I didn’t have to think of the design. I am, of course, making my own changes and it will be just for me.
And the fourth project for the near term is a new deep space quilt. I love doing these. I have worked out the technique, have all the supplies I need for one, and I take the design straight from one of the NASA photographs they so generously share copyright free, so I only need to put some size and spacing marks on a wholecloth black top and away I go. I plan on putting how to do this either in my current book on embellishment or in its own book. So I will be taking a lot of pictures as I go. In case you are unfamiliar with such quilts, I have two below for you to see. Both have won ribbons, and the Sky Horse was in the juried Houston show in 2014.

Sky Horse photographed by Ken Tatum

Spiral Galaxy No. 3

These are so much fun to make. I make them at my sitdown longarm because they are all free motion stitching.

Sttitching with a reference picture

And finally, my oldest son Ken who designed Pendragon for me is working on Excalabar design for the next in my ancient manuscript series. If I manage to get all of these quilts done this year I will be doing very well. I don’t work as fast as some of my competors in the show quilt world…hahaha.

Pendragon
34 x 45

Sew happy everyone! I love you all. I hope you are keeping busy and making all kinds of fun things in your studio, or cooking, or gardening, or doing all of these things. God bless you!

Thoughts about Machines

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in High-Tech Studio, Machines, My micro-business, My Studio / 10 Comments

One thing for certain, my kind of fabric work requires a good quality sewing machine, and I need to be able to both embroider and free motion quilt on it a great deal (to a professional level). Working as I do, I put a lot of stress on my main machine.

On Thursday my wonderful Bernina 830 LE, whose name is Gibbs (after the Gibbs in Wilcox and Gibbs who were historically important in the development of sewing machinery) went berserk in the middle of a simple embroidery stitch-out. First it started sewing really really fast, which I managed to stop. Then it started back sewing ok for about 10 stitches, and suddenly there was a “clunk” and the needle stopped going up and down, but the bobbin was spinning at a steady pace. I tried to stop the embroidery, but the bobbin still spun. I turned the machine off and on again, and, after a few seconds, the bobbin spun. I had noticed one time before that it had stitched very fast for no apparent reason, but that was months ago and it stopped after one incident, and I cleaned and oiled it and it went back to sewing ok. I was in shock and actually cried a bit.

Gibbs at work machine appliqueing with very narrow zig zag. Note the Sashiko that I stitched out on Gibbs using the embroidery module.

Sew I don’t know whether it is prohibitively expensive to repair it (in other words, it is “dead”), or whether it is repairable. I have put about 9 million stitches on it over the course of the past four and a half years, and have used it on average probably more than 25 to 35 hours a week, with some weeks being about 50 or 60 hours. I’m taking it in to the shop on Monday. I am blessed with a very good Bernina dealership and a first rate tech (Lew) at G Street Fabrics. It is about an hour from here over heavy traffic, so I only go when I have to.

This comes at a really bad time…not that these things ever are good times…but I had just begun working on building my son Ken’s special quilt design project. This is something that requires some bits of machine embroidery. I wanted to complete this very challenging project by mid August so I could enter it into the Pennsylvania National Quilt Festival.

I took Gibbs in for his spa treatment and to fix a minor problem in March, and Lew told me then that I really used that machine hard and should buy a longarm to “share the burden” of all that stitching. I knew then that I could not even get a longarm in the house even if I could afford one. But I also started thinking about a sit down longarm.

Yesterday, my oldest son came along with my daughter in law to pick up Kevin, my grandson. While he was here we all talked about the possibilities. They know that I have been putting extra effort this year into moving my quilting up a level competitively, and am also working on a couple of books…one on applique for fabric art and one on surface design. And I have really been making a lot of good progress on all of this. Also, I have limited funds and can’t really afford to buy a new 8 series Bernina or similar machine every four years. Besides, it interrupts the flow of work when it is out of service.

Sew something needs to be done if I am to continue on this path, which I hope will eventually start making me a bit more money..in fact, it already has, but not enough to pay for a new machine. It’s a wonderful career for me as I move into my senior years. I am not the type to not have a career even if I were very wealthy. It’s the joy of creativity, and I must continue in some fashion.

Yesterday I packed up Gibbs with everything he came with to take it out on Monday, and realized my studio really needs a good cleaning. So I started that. I am setting up my Bernina B350 (Edith Claire Head…ECLAIR) and my Bernina 1230 (Betsy Ross…BETSY) and getting them all cleaned and oiled to help me through this crisis.

I know there are a lot of fabric artists out there who do not have a big advanced machine, and they make beautiful fabric art and quilts. My problem is that I am something of a techie and I have developed paths that take advantage of what these advanced machines can do. I know I could go back to not having an embroidery machine or a big harp space, but I don’t think that is the right path for me. So it is a crisis.

I am considering what to do. I can’t decide, of course, until I know whether or not Gibbs can be repaired, or if I have to replace it. But even if it can, I need to figure out what to do about the possibility of a sit down longarm to add to my store of machines. It would be a wonderful addition, and would allow me to use the main machine mostly for quilt top construction. I do like to use decorative stitching sometimes in my quilting, but it is a small percentage of my quilting and I could still use it for that. Mostly I do free motion with my Bernina Stitch Regulator. Besides, I think I could do ever better fmq on such a machine.

Sew happy everyone! I’ll let you know how this goes. Have a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend!